9 Subtle Traits Of The Most Talented Leaders

Good bosses look good on paper. Great bosses look great in
person; their actions show their value.

Yet some bosses go even farther. They're remarkable—not because
of what you see them do but what you don't see them do.

Where remarkable bosses are concerned, what you see is far from
all you get:

1. They forgive... and they forget.

When an employee makes a mistake—especially a major mistake—it's
easy to forever view that employee through the perspective of
that mistake.

I know. I've done it.

But one mistake, or one weakness, is just one part of the whole
person.

Great bosses are able to step back, set aside a mistake, and
think about the whole employee.

Remarkable bosses are also able to forget that mistake, because
they know that viewing any employee through the lens of one
incident may forever impact how they treat that employee.

And they know the employee will be able to tell.

To forgive may be divine, but to forget can be even more divine.

2. They transform company goals into the employees'
personal goals.

Great bosses inspire their employees to achieve company goals.

Remarkable bosses make their employees feel that what they do
will benefit them as much as it does the company. After all, whom
will you work harder for: A company or yourself?

Whether they get professional development, an opportunity to
grow, a chance to shine, a chance to flex their favorite business
muscles, employees who feel a sense of personal purpose almost
always outperform employees who feel a sense of company purpose.

And they have a lot more fun doing it.

Remarkable bosses know their employees well enough to tap the
personal, not just the professional.

3. They look past the action to the emotion and
motivation.

Sometimes employees make mistakes or simply do the wrong thing.
Sometimes they take over projects or roles without approval or
justification. Sometimes they jockey for position, play political
games, or ignore company objectives in pursuit of personal goals.

When that happens it's easy to assume they don't listen or don't
care. But almost always there's a deeper reason: They feel
stifled, they feel they have no control, they feel marginalized
or frustrated—or maybe they are just trying to find a sense of
meaning in their work that pay rates and titles can never
provide.

Effective bosses deal with actions. Remarkable bosses search for
the underlying issues that, when overcome, lead to much bigger
change for the better.

4. They support without seeking credit.

A customer is upset. A vendor feels shortchanged. A coworker is
frustrated. Whatever the issue, good bosses support their
employees. They know that to do otherwise undermines the
employee's credibility and possibly authority.

Afterword, most bosses will say to the employee, "Listen, I took
up for you, but..."

Remarkable bosses don't say anything. They feel supporting their
employees—even if that shines a negative spotlight on
themselves—is the right thing to do and is therefore
unremarkable.

Even though we all know it isn't.

5. They make fewer public decisions.

When a decision needs to be made, most of the time the best
person to make that decision isn't the boss. Most of the time the
best person is the employee closest to the issue.

Decisiveness is a quality of a good boss. Remarkable bosses can
be decisive but often in a different way: They decide they aren't
the right person and then decide who is the right
person.

They do it not because they don't want to avoid making those
decisions but because they know they shouldn't make
those decisions.

6. They don't see control as a reward.

Many people desperately want to be the boss so they can finally
call the shots.

Remarkable bosses don't care about control. As a result they
aren't seen to exercise control.

They're seen as a person who helps.

7. They allow employees to learn their own
lessons.

It's easy for a boss to debrief an employee and turn a teachable
moment into a lesson learned.

It's a lot harder to let employees learn their own lessons, even
though the lessons we learn on our own are the lessons we
remember forever.

Remarkable bosses don't scold or dictate; they work together with
an employee to figure out what happened and what to do to correct
the mistake.

They help find a better way, not a disciplinary way.

Great employees don't need to be scolded or reprimanded. They
know what they did wrong.

Sometimes staying silent is the best way to ensure they remember.

8. They let employees have the ideas.

Years ago I worked in manufacturing and my boss sent me to help
move the production control offices. It was basically manual
labor, but for two days it put me in a position to watch and hear
and learn a lot about how the plant's production flow was
controlled.

I found it fascinating and later I asked my boss if I could be
trained to fill in as a production clerk. Those two days sparked
a lifelong interest in productivity and process improvement.

Years later he admitted he sent me to help move their furniture.
"I knew you'd go in there with your eyes wide open," he said,
"and once you got a little taste I knew you'd love it."

Remarkable bosses see the potential in their employees and find
ways to let them have the ideas, even though the outcome was what
they intended all along.

9. They always go home feeling they could have done
better.

Leadership is like a smorgasbord of insecurity. Bosses worry
about employees and customers and results. You name it, they
worry about it.

That's why remarkable bosses go home every day feeling they could
have done things a little better or smarter. They wish they had
treated employees with a little more sensitivity or empathy.

Most importantly, they always go home feeling they could have
done more to fulfill the trust their employees place in them.

And that's why, although you can't see it, when they walk in the
door every day remarkable bosses make a silent commitment to do
their jobs even better than they did yesterday.